Ethel Lee Stevens passed away Oct 25, 1979 and is buried at Bay Creek Cemetery, Loganville, GA

Articles have been edited by Suzanne Forte for brevity and to avoid mention of living individuals.

Mrs. Ethel Stevens, 82, is one of those rare individuals who never looked for opportunities.  She never had to look, because opportunities always found her.

Born the sixth of 11 children of the lat George Randolph Stevens and Lula (McElvaney) Stevens, her earliest memories are of the old Stevens home place which still stands on Bay Creek Road and which she owned till last year.

"We worked hard and had plenty to eat," she says.  "My father died at a very young age with a ruptured appendix, and once when just about everyone in the family had smallpox, they quarantined  good stretch of Bay Creek Road.  That was about 1900.  Now I have only one brother and two sisters.

Mrs. Stevens joined Bay Creek Baptist Church in 1911 the same year her father died. 

"Aunt Ethel" as her younger relatives say, went to school at Piney Grove.  She took a correspondence course from the State Normal School in Athens and began teaching in Walton County at age 16.  Two days after the took the test, the trustees of Piney Grove, Office Bailey and E. S. Garrett offered her the teaching job at Piney grove.

"I taught one year there, one year at Oak Grove, one year at Double Springs and then came back to Oak Grove. 

Following her teaching, Mrs. Stevens worked six years at the Loganville Mercantile as a sales person under D. Y. Hodges.

"My friends in business challenged me to open my own business" she says.  "So I opened my own reweaving business called Decatur Reweavers.  I worked there from 1945-1961.  I ran one ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and received orders from South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and all over Georgia.  I never placed another ad and never wanted for business.  I served Ben Forston, Gus Stark, W. S. Stuckey and students from several colleges and schools.